by William Boyd
‘Do you feel that?’ Yves Hill asks her.
‘Feel what?’
Yves Hill points to the climbing grey thread of his cigarette smoke; suddenly it judders, ripples, bends and breaks. Bethany feels her long hair stir on her bare, damp shoulders.
‘How would you describe that?’ he asks.
‘A very faint breeze? The slightest current of air?’
‘How inadequate is that? How vague? How inaccurate?’ Yves Hill says, his voice reedy with frustration, and points up towards the thin cobbling of milky cloud, motionless in the washed-out blue of the sky. ‘The most insignificant cloud has a proper name – cumulo-cirrus-nimbus, or some such.’ He looks sharply at her. ‘Why can’t we do better than “a very faint breeze”?’
‘I can feel it just stirring my hair,’ Bethany says.
Yves Hill takes out his notebook and jots something down.
The next time Bethany sees Yves Hill the weather has changed: cool and overcast with a nervy, blustery wind, more like autumn than summer. Bethany sits in the bullring wearing a fleece, her novel open on her knee. It is her last day at work as Donatella Brazzi is closing Pergamena for the month of August while she returns to her home in Brescia. Bethany is wondering what she will do with all the spare time on her hands.
‘Ah, Bethany, hoped I’d find you here,’ Yves Hill says, coming over and sitting beside her. ‘Any news of that rascal, Sholto?’
‘No, I’m very glad to say,’ Bethany replies, firmly. ‘I think I may have met someone else, in fact. He’s called Kasimierz.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Yves Hill says. ‘A good kingly name,’ and he hands her a small packet wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. ‘A present,’ he says. ‘My little monograph. My work is over now.’
A NOMENCLATURE OF BREEZES AND WINDS BY YVES HILL
Odilon – dead calm
Bethany – stirs hair
Arnaud – cools sweat
Marius – grass moves
Valentin – leaves rustle
Modeste – branches shift
Honorine – grass is combed
Isidore – fallen leaves blow
Anselm – whips hair
Solange – hats blow off
Blandine – windows rattle
Prosper – thrashes branches
Hippolyte – lifts sand and dirt
Fabrice – birds fly with difficulty
Gontran – umbrellas blow out
Norbert – loss of footing
Zoltan – trees uprooted
Yves Hill’s little monograph is bulked out with an introduction that contains a ferocious attack on the Beaufort Scale method of describing winds – ‘a clumsy, primitive tool, incomprehensible to laymen, based on air speed that must be measured with an instrument’ – an analysis of his seventeen categories of breeze and wind that can all be simply and instantly evaluated by a normal human being’s functioning senses and an explanation of why he has chosen – by and large – French saints’ names for his notional taxonomy (‘no Anglo-Saxon baggage or associations’). He has inscribed the flyleaf with a dedication that reads: ‘For Bethany – now there is no excuse for not being precise. Good luck. Spread the word. Fondly, Yves Ivan Hill’.
Bethany opens it at home and is very touched – not least because she has a type of gentle breeze named after her, but also because now she knows what Yves Hill was doing all those days in the park, in all weathers, evolving his classification of the winds. She wants to write and congratulate him on his achievement, to assure him that she will describe breezes and winds from now on using his patent system – whether exhausted by an odilon, refreshed by a marius, made anxious by a norbert – and to thank him for his kind words and thoughtful advice at a difficult personal time. To her annoyance she realizes she doesn’t have his address.
Bethany goes back to Green Park at lunchtime every day for a week but there is no sign of Yves Hill. The phone book and the Internet provide no address and those few books of his she finds in a second-hand bookshop in Cecil Court are all published by long-defunct publishers. ‘Try the Society of Authors,’ the bookseller suggests, so she writes to Yves Hill care of the Society and waits for his reply.
Green Park is showing its first signs of autumn: a few yellow leaves on the plane trees, the longer grass bleached and dry. Bethany sits in the bullring hoping, willing Yves Hill to appear. Tomorrow she goes to Norfolk where she has a two-week job as an extra in a film about the poet John Milton. She is playing a serving maid in John Milton’s household and the director says there may even be the possibility of a line or two. Once again, Bethany’s mother has sorted her daughter’s life out. The director is a friend of a friend, a meeting was arranged, he offered her this small role almost immediately. For reasons she can’t really explain, Bethany very much wants to tell Yves Hill this news – to tell him that she has decided not to become a novelist, after all, and that being an actor is what she dreams about. But no sign of him. She looks at her watch: she has to go – Kasimierz is going to meet her in a pub in Covent Garden. A bethany stirs her hair and she shivers.
Three …
Just because she has a small part in a low-budget, independent film – a very small part, slightly better than an extra – Bethany Mellmoth has been strictly telling herself not to get any grand ideas and to stop fantasizing, in her many moments alone, of this project as a film ‘starring Bethany Mellmoth’. Only bitter disappointment lies that way, Bethany repeats to herself, wondering what the poster will look like.
One of the reasons she finds herself thinking about the poster is that the title of the film keeps changing. When she was first sent the script in London it was called Paradise (Lost). When she was met by the unit runner at Norwich station and handed the new much thinner draft it was entitled God v. Satan, as if it were a horror/action movie. Now she sees from her call-sheet for tomorrow that it is known as [email protected] – most off-putting. When she first read the script it was the story about a young schizophrenic called John Milton, living in contemporary London, who believes he is possessed by the spirit of the seventeenth-century poet and that answers to all his mental problems are to be found in the text of Paradise Lost. Now all the contemporary scenes have been withdrawn while they are rewritten and they are only shooting the period flashback sections. Bethany supposes that Gareth Gonzalez Wintle, as he’s both the director and the writer, knows what he is doing.
She looks at her watch – only 2.45 – a long time to go before she can cook her frugal supper and even longer before she can decently go to the pub. There is only one thing for it – another walk on the beach. She takes three paces to the end of the caravan and feels it tip slightly under her weight, like a boat, and rummages in her suitcase (never fully unpacked) for her book, Paradise Lost by John Milton. There’s no point in taking her script because her character has no lines – even though she was promised lines – just stage directions that bear no relation to the set or location or what she is ever asked to do by Gareth Gonzalez Wintle. She checks her bag – phone, purse, cigarettes, lighter, lip-salve, notebook, camera, peppermints, Buddha-mascot. She pulls on her red wellington boots, coat, scarf and beanie, finds the keys to the caravan and steps out the door, locking it behind her – a merely symbolic gesture, she thinks, as the door seems so flimsy and thin even she would be able to punch or kick a hole in it if she had burglary on her mind.
She pauses and lights a cigarette, noting simultaneously that she only has three left – she’ll have to buy some more – and that she’s smoking too much on this film. Her mother has promised to give her £1,000 if she stops smoking before her twenty-fourth birthday but the sum seems unreal, a chimera, unobtainable. She exhales, audibly, feeling her mood darken, angry at her weak will, frustrated at how everything seems to be going wrong in minor, aggravating, inconsequential ways – such as the caravan and its disadvantages – not significant or provocative enough to generate the key decision to leave and start again, she considers. She has small, nag
ging grumbles, not real complaints or problems and she would feel ashamed turning up at home having left the film for such footling, silly reasons – squandering this amazing opportunity, this once-in-a-lifetime chance to really make it as a film actress. Or at least start to make it.
The caravan park at Faith-next-the-Sea in Norfolk sits midway between the town with its small inland harbour and the sea itself, almost a mile distant. Faith-quite-far-from-the-Sea should be its name, Bethany thinks, as she plods along the road to the beach beside the narrow-gauge railway towards the shuttered, brightly coloured beach cabins and the vast, endless stretch of sand that low tide has revealed. She already feels her spirits lifting as she approaches the beach and the distant sound of surf begins to whisper in her ears. It’s a grey blustery day for September, more like February or March, she thinks, glad of her coat and scarf. One hour up the beach, she says to herself, one hour back, telly, beans on toast, drink in the pub, early to bed ready for the six o’clock call for hair and make-up. An actor’s life has its compensations, she decides – and she’s getting paid, she must remember, £50 a day plus free accommodation.
Bethany stands in the middle of the enormous, apparently endless beach surrounded by square miles of damp sand, the surf still some hundred yards off, the light pearly and uniform, the horizon a blurry, darker grey line shading into the clouds. Turning, she sees the black-green jagged stripe of the pines behind the dunes and, beyond that, more unchanging grey sky. A kind of dizziness afflicts her – she senses her insignificance, a small two-legged homunculus in the midst of all this space, a mere speck, a tiny crawling gnat in this elemental simplicity of sand, water and sky.
She squats on her haunches, worried she might fall over, and to distract herself takes out her camera and frames a shot of the beach, the sea and the packed clouds – it looks like an abstract painting. Click. It looks like an abstract painting by – what was his name? Colour-field paintings they are called, the three layers of colour-fields in this case being broad, horizontal bands of dark taupe, slate grey, nebulous tarnished silver. It is rather beautiful. She stands up, feeling equilibrium return – maybe she was hungry and felt faint for a second or two or maybe, she wonders, maybe she has experienced an actual existential moment – an epiphany – and has seen clearly the reality of her place in the world and has felt the nothingness, the vast indifference of the universe …
Gareth Gonzalez Wintle rehearses the scene in front of camera. Harold Duke is playing John Milton with primitive small dark sunglasses, like black pennies mounted on a simple wire frame. These glasses are Duke’s idea, Bethany knows, as she overheard the argument Gareth had with him, trying vainly to persuade him that they were anachronistic. Duke is also playing Milton with a thick cockney accent – his idea as well. ‘He was born in Cheapside, for fuck’s sake, Gareth,’ Duke said. ‘He’s a Lahndaner, mate.’ Gareth had conceded the point. If she is honest, Bethany is a little frightened of Harold Duke. Out of character, he has a deep, plummy voice and an impassive, immobile face, hardly moving his lips when he speaks. He refers to Bethany, whenever he rarely has to, as ‘Sweets’. Bethany affects a feigned cool around him – as if unimpressed by his reputation, indifferent to his fame – that possibly explains why she is smoking so much.
Bethany is baffled by this scene. She is playing a maid in the Milton household called Amy Coster and she interrupts the great poet as he is dictating the opening lines of Paradise Lost to Andrew Marvell (the singer-songwriter Wayne Hutton, no less). Milton suppresses his huge irritation, looks up and says, ‘Is that you, Amy?’ At which point Bethany simply nods and, in response to Milton’s next question – ‘How is the day, my child?’ – still says nothing. The problem Bethany has is that Milton then responds, ‘Aye, you’re right, methought there was rain coming. It’ll be here by noontide.’ Then Bethany/Amy leaves and Milton carries on with his epic poem.
At lunch – curried eggs and chips – Bethany wonders whether she should bring this matter up with Gareth. She sees him scraping his uneaten eggs into the bin liner hanging on the rear of the catering van and seizes the moment.
‘Gareth? Got a sec?’
‘Yeah, hi, Melanie, cool, how are you?’
‘Bethany.’
‘Sorry. Sorry – fuckwit. Nightmare day. Bethany, Bethany, Bethany.’ He repeats her name a few more times like a mantra. He does look tired, Bethany thinks, his eyes red and sore, his face unshaven. He would be quite a good-looking guy if his chin wasn’t slightly weak. Bethany explains her dilemma. If Milton is blind how can he see her nod when he asks if it is Amy? Furthermore, shouldn’t she say something when he wonders what the weather is like? His answer seems to imply that she’s said something she shouldn’t –
‘Don’t worry, Bethany. We’ll sort it out in post.’
‘I could just say, “It looks like rain, sire,” or something.’
‘We’ve finished that scene. It’s in the can.’
‘But it seems stupid –’
‘Stupid?’
‘Well, illogical.’
‘Details, Bethany. Don’t bother me with fucking details! I’ve got a fucking movie to make, here!’
To her annoyance, Bethany then has a brief cry in the Portaloo. Gareth had thrown his plate and cutlery into the bin liner and strode off muttering to himself. She could see how angry he was and she knows that he is under pressure – this is his first feature film. It doesn’t matter how many commercials or rock videos you’ve made, a full-length period feature film is a different animal – a snarling, hairy, unruly beast longing to create mayhem. There’s a knock on the door and she hears Harold Duke’s drawling voice.
‘Is there a cholera epidemic going on in there?’
She steps out, trying to manufacture an ironic smile.
‘Sorry.’
‘You all right, Sweets?’
‘Yeah. Absolutely fine. How’re you?’
It’s at moments like these, at the end of the filming day, that Bethany misses Layla, her erstwhile caravan co-dweller. Layla Gravell played Milton’s wife Mary, a role with a few lines. She and Bethany shared the caravan at Faith-next-the-Sea for four days before Layla walked off the set, packed and went back to Swansea, where she lived. Before she left she advised Bethany to quit also. ‘Of all the half-arsed, sad-sack, loser films I’ve worked on this one takes the biscuit,’ she said in her husky sing-song accent. So she went away and Bethany moved into her slightly more comfortable divan bed. Milton’s wife is written out of the film.
Bethany comes back from the pub a bit drunk. She played pool with two Faith lads and beat them, to their incredulous chagrin. They bought her two double vodkas and cranberry juice – the bet – and she feels their effect now as she bangs around the galley kitchen trying to fill the kettle, light a cigarette and plug in the toaster. There’s a knock on the door. It’s Gareth, he has a bottle of red wine in his hand and Bethany lets him in. He’s here to apologize, he says, for losing his temper at lunch. He’s really sorry – it was unprofessional and, worse, uncool.
‘No worries, Gareth, I know you’re under a lot of pressure.’
‘You wouldn’t believe it, mate,’ Gareth says pouring out a glass of wine and beginning to list the astonishing pressures he faces, 24/7. The more wine Gareth drinks the angrier he becomes and the more candid. Bethany learns that the film is being financed largely by Harold Duke and a few of his wealthy friends. Gareth wrote the script but now Duke is having it rewritten by a writer he knows called Chaz Charles.
‘I don’t mind being rewritten,’ Gareth says, lighting one of Bethany’s cigarettes, ‘don’t get me wrong, Bethany – that’s the movie biz, the nature of the beast. But I do mind my film about John Milton being torn apart by a pillock who writes sketches for washed-up comics and talk-show hosts.’
‘Hence the title changes.’
‘Exactamundo.’
‘Why does Harold Duke want to play John Milton?’ Bethany asks.
‘Because he’s sick of playing cop
s. He’s sick of being Chief Superintendent Daniel Speed. He wants to prove he’s a genuine thesp. So we meet and I pitch him my John Milton Paradise Lost idea. He loves it, I write the script and then it all goes down the toilet.’
Gareth starts to rant again, standing and pacing up and down the short length of the caravan. Gareth being heavier than Bethany the tilt and drop as he reaches the unsteady end is more marked. Bethany instinctively realizes that this is a monologue not to be interrupted, so to pass the time she writes down – on the notepad she uses for her shopping lists – all the words Gareth employs to illustrate his troubles. Harold Duke and Chaz Charles are the targets for most of his bile, and also a man called Terry Arbuthnot whom Duke has brought in as a producer. Amongst the many adjectives Bethany writes down she sees that ‘dull’ is a particular favourite – also banal, mulish, vapid, nauseating, suburban, drab, gutless, mediocre, ugly, trivial, futile, odious, provincial, petty, constipated, lazy, infuriating, stale and stupid – as well as many assorted swear words. Gareth empties the bottle of wine.
‘I sit there listening to these ghastly, trivial nonentities, trying to conceal the wracking spasms of contempt I feel for their drab little turnip brains as they mumble on about John Milton and Paradise Lost. It’s Kafkaesque. I mean, I went to Cambridge and got a perfectly acceptable degree in English Literature, and I have to kowtow to Terry Arbuthnot, a property developer who made his money from, from, from, I don’t know … shopping centres and multistorey car parks, suggesting that it would be “sexier” if Andrew Marvell was a woman.’
Bethany feels a form of supernatural exhaustion creep over her as he talks on, grateful that she has a day off tomorrow. Gareth eventually asks if she has any more drink and, when she says no, he decides he’d better be on his way. He kisses her on both cheeks and gives her a hug as he leaves. He steps out into the caravan park and looks around him in astonishment, as if he’s noticing the caravans for the first time.